


imagine this place (our secret space)

by specters (scientias)



Category: Suits (US TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Comic Book Stores, Fluff, Getting Together, Lawyer Harvey Specter, M/M, Marvel References, Mentioned Donna Paulsen, Minor Original Character(s), Nerd Mike Ross, Pokemon References, Star Trek Fan Harvey Specter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-10
Updated: 2019-02-10
Packaged: 2019-10-25 20:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17732297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scientias/pseuds/specters
Summary: Harvey Specter doesn't do lunch breaks, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't spend them visiting rundown old comic book stores only to get flustered by blue-eyed, superhero-loving, overly-eager shop assistants. He's a lawyer, and he knows better.





	imagine this place (our secret space)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saintmachina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saintmachina/gifts).



> Apparently this takes place in a timeline where Harvey and Mike are slightly younger than when we first meet them, but the age gap is still the same, but it's also the present day, and not, like, 2011.

 

A glance at his phone told him it was twenty four minutes to one in the afternoon, which came as no real surprise, given that he’d been checking it obsessively since he’d set foot out of the office.

Harvey Specter taking a lunch break at all was fairly unheard of, but Harvey Specter _leaving the office_ to take a lunch break? He’d thought Donna might fall out of her seat.

“I’ll be half an hour, tops,” he’d assured her as he walked out, already feeling a little uncomfortable at the idea of ditching for that long.

Having lunch outside the office, that was nothing new. He wined and dined their clients all the time, and having lunch was so much easier than going through the formalities of dinner. He was often away from the office too, making visits and meeting new people, and generally being the social butterfly everyone saw him as, but taking a break in the middle of the day to do personal business?

Harvey loosened his tie a little and quickened his pace, his blood pressure rising at the mere thought of being away from his desk for something this trivial.

On a Tuesday, no less. A _Tuesday_.

He shot furtive glances around as he weaved his way in and around people, daring someone to recognise him and question his actions.

Like anyone would. The sidewalks were crowded, as always, with street sellers, and tourists, and fresh young graduates who still dutifully took their lunch breaks to join a mile long queue at the latest vegan cafe to open in the district.

Harvey smirked at his cynicism. They’d learn soon enough. 

Success meant taking no breaks. 

Unless you were Harvey Specter, and it was a Tuesday, and you had to get this one thing done, and the goddamn shop didn’t open until eleven and closed at four.

What kind of store only opened for five hours a day anyway? Harvey had held longer meetings than that.

He continued to snake his way through the crowds, his brisk walk and no-nonsense expression forcing people to move out of his way before they’d really had a chance to ask themselves why. He’d never been to this store before, but he had a vague idea of where it was, and he figured it couldn’t be too hard to miss. They were in the business district after all; shops were few and far between as it was. 

Frankly, he had no idea how this thing was still open, but the internet had informed him that it was, so it would do the job.

Taking a right, he spotted it from a mile away, even though the front of the shop was unassuming, just a white panel with black letters spelling out the name of the shop.

_Phoenix_

Harvey grimaced.

What the hell was he doing?

Continuing forward, since he’d come this far now, and Harvey Specter wasn’t a coward, he had to pass the window display to get to the rickety little door, and his eyes widened as he took it all in. The box in pride of place cost nearly five hundred dollars, and _yeah_ , that was a little eye-watering.

The moment he actually set foot inside was the first real moment Harvey considered turning around again, but the less than sturdy door was attached to an irritating bell, which signalled his arrival loud and clear. Not that it was difficult when the shop was completely empty besides him and the dude manning the till, who had jerked up so suddenly at the sound of the bell, Harvey wondered if he was the first customer of the day.

“Uh, hey,” the cashier said, raising an awkward hand in greeting, and taking a split second too long to lower it again as he took in Harvey’s appearance.

Which, okay, fair; his suit probably cost more than the shop took in a week, and his expensive cologne was only more noticeable for the musty odour of the store. It smelled of sweaty, spotty, teenaged boys, like the gym back in high school or the frat houses he attended parties at during college. Like it rarely got cleaned, and rarely saw much action, and rarely saw much daylight.

As Harvey cast his eye over the cashier, deciding to subject him to the same treatment, he determined that the shop wasn’t the only one not getting enough daylight.

“Hi,” Harvey said, straightening his tie for no reason, and even his _voice_ sounded out of place here.

“Can I... help you?” the man asked with uncertainty, blinking at Harvey with the brightest, bluest eyes he’d ever seen, momentarily catching him off guard.

“Yeah, I’m... looking... for something,” Harvey said lamely, trailing off, and the guy quirked an eyebrow.

“What are you looking for? I could help you find it?”

Harvey stood there, looking at this bright-eyed, bushy-tailed kid, who had shadows under his eyes darker than Harvey’s deep purple tie, and a faded superhero t-shirt hanging off his shoulders, and he realised he couldn’t do it.

Not a chance.

“I need a present for my nephew,” Harvey invented, clearing his throat and nodding his head, satisfied with the lie.

“No worries,” the shop assistant said with a grin that lit up his entire face, then hopped off his chair and wandered around the other side of the counter. “What does he like?”

He gestured to the shop, and Harvey swallowed before following the movement. 

He resisted the urge to close his eyes in despair.

God help him, what was he doing in a comic book store?

One wall was completely covered in comics, which had been expected, but was still a fairly staggering sight to behold. The shelves went from floor to ceiling, all of them stuffed full. Some of the comic books had clearly been there so long they’d started to gather dust, the colours fading from the cover a little and the corners starting to curl in on themselves. 

The rest of the shop was just a headache of colour. Cards, dice, plushies, board games, action figures... everywhere Harvey looked, some nerdy piece of memorabilia was stashed on a shelf, into a nook or cranny, and it physically hurt his eyes to try and focus in on something, anything, that he could believably be looking for.

“Um,” Harvey faltered, and the cashier, bless him, clearly sensed how out of his depth he was.

“Does he play any games?” he offered helpfully, and Harvey nodded. Sure, his non-existent nephew was a gamer, why not? “PlayStation? Xbox? Nintendo?”

“Nintendo,” Harvey supplied, picking the one that sounded most familiar.

“Well, we have a bunch of new Pokémon stuff just arrived,” the assistant said, sounding excited, and Harvey let himself be led over to a particularly colourful array of _stuff_ , trying desperately to look for something befitting of a present for a small, fictional child. 

“These are nice,” Harvey said, almost robotically, reaching out a hand and grabbing a small stuffed toy at random. Kids liked plushies, right?

“Yeah, they’re awesome,” the shop assistant agreed, flashing Harvey another one of his dazzling smiles, before picking up several more. “Who’s his starter?”

Harvey looked at the orange, dragon-like thing in his hand, and at the similarly shaped yellow, blue and green blobs being offered out to him, and cursed himself again for thinking it had in any way been sensible to come here.

“I don’t know,” he said, and he knew there was a pitch of desperation in his voice, because the cashier looked at him pitifully, his mouth twisting with doubt.

“Uhh, you could just give him a Pikachu?” he suggested, presenting him with the yellow blob.

“I’ll take all of them,” Harvey said, panicked at the strange words now being thrown at him.

“Cool!” the cashier said, and Harvey nodded, plastering a smile on to his face after a second’s delay. “Man, what a lucky nephew you have.”

Harvey gritted his teeth as he followed the kid to the counter, depositing the orange and yellow blobs next to the green and blue ones.

“Hopefully he’ll like them,” Harvey said tightly, still forcing a smile.

“I’m sure he will,” the cashier said as he rang them through, sounding genuinely excited about the damn things. If Harvey wasn’t already feeling like such a prize idiot, he’d have offered to just give them to him. “Squirtle’s my favourite.”

He held up the blue blob with a laugh, and Harvey noted that it looked vaguely like a tortoise, and then it was being shoved in a bag with the rest of them, and the cashier was asking for the most part of fifty dollars off him, and Harvey’s head was hurting again.

As the assistant bagged up his purchases, Harvey noticed that there was an open comic book on the side, and figured this was what he’d pulled the guy from when he’d entered the shop.

“It’s the new Spider-Man,” he explained, sounding a little sheepish. “Boss lets me read them the day they get in as long as I leave it in good enough condition to sell.”

Harvey nodded, still looking at the pages. His curiosity for this entire world he had no knowledge of was getting the better of him, and that was always dangerous.

“Do you, uhh, do you read any comics?” the assistant hedged, and Harvey’s head snapped back up to his meet his.

“No,” Harvey snorted. For whatever reason, possibly the confusion of being in such a strange place, maybe because he hadn’t actually eaten yet, definitely not because of the crestfallen expression on the kid’s face, something twisted in Harvey’s stomach, and he suddenly regretted his reaction. “Do you... recommend one?”

What the hell possessed those words to leave his mouth next, he didn’t know.

Springing back into his former self, but somehow more eager and earnest, if possible, the guy ran back out from around the counter and plucked a couple of comics off the shelf.

“I’m biased, I love Spider-Man, but really any of the Marvel comics are pretty good. You seem like the kind of person who might enjoy Iron Man stuff, but a lot of people read Captain America these days, you know because of the movies?”

Three comics were being thrust at him as the boy rambled, and Harvey panicked, _again_ , and took the one with Spider-Man on, recognising it at least.

“Maybe I’ll try this one,” Harvey said, but it sounded more like a question.

Still beaming, the cashier added it to his total, and now Harvey was breaking into a hundred dollar bill for a bunch of stuff he neither needed nor wanted, and this lunchtime really hadn’t panned out the way he’d envisioned it.

“I hope your nephew likes the stuff,” the guy said as he handed him his bag and his change. “And let me know what you think of the comic!”

Harvey didn’t have the heart to tell the kid that he would neither be reading the comic nor returning to this shop, ever, ever again, so he just smiled and nodded, grabbing his new purchases and dashing out the door with a muttered ‘thanks’, hoping he’d get back to work within the half hour he’d promised himself.

As he left, Harvey passed the window again, glancing at the display. There, in all its apparent glory, was a box advertising a model _Reliant_ , a 1200-piece build it yourself job. A mere four hundred and ninety dollars. 

Harvey shook his head and carried on. He told himself he’d give the bag of stuff to the first shelter he passed on the way back to work, or hand it off to some kids at the park. God only knows what Donna would say if he came back to work with _toys_.

Sure enough, the park was brimming with kids, and Harvey quickly deposited the bag with a fairly stressed looking nanny, telling her to have a good day. She’d looked up at him, confused, but Harvey didn’t have the time to stand around and chit chat.

He’d disposed of the evidence, and now he never needed to think of the events of today’s lunch again. It had very clearly secured his position on lunch breaks, which was that they were unnecessary, and could, in extreme circumstances, cause real problems. 

Okay, he was being dramatic, but Harvey wasn’t taking another one ever again, he promised himself, as he strode back through the doors of Pearson Hardman, patting his jacket to check the comic and the blue tortoise were still safely tucked in his inside pocket.

~ ~ ~

“Bro, you are _never_ going to believe this.”

In the past however many months Mike Ross had spent at _Phoenix_ , he’d never arrived for a Thursday morning shift to find a coworker so excited to see him.

“What?” he asked, slinging his bag on to the lumpy old couch that served as the seating area in their cramped staffroom.

“We sold the _Reliant_ model! You know the giant Star Trek thing we had in the window?” 

“No way,” Mike said, genuinely stunned. That set had had a price tag of nearly five hundred dollars; they’d assumed they wouldn’t be able to shift it for weeks, if at all.

“Yes way. Apparently some rich dude in a fancy suit showed up yesterday and just took it. Didn’t ask any questions, didn’t try to barter or anything. He just handed his credit card over and walked out with it.”

Mike raised an eyebrow. Rich dude in a fancy suit, huh? He’d had someone like that come in the store on his last shift, a couple days ago. 

Then again, they _were_ based in Manhattan’s business district. Rich dudes in fancy suits were hardly a rare sight.

“Well, that’s really cool,” Mike said, sounding genuine. The shop had been struggling a little as of late, and he didn’t really want to see it shut down. Partly because it meant the world to Pete, its elderly owner, but mostly because Mike really didn’t have the time to be looking for another job right now. Finding this one had been hard enough.

“Maybe he’ll come back in sometime, when you’re on shift, and you can make a big sale,” his coworker said, and Mike nodded, smiling at him, as though that was all he’d ever wanted in life. To make a three figure sale in a rundown comic book store on a New York street.

He turned away briefly, so the other employee wouldn’t see his soured expression, and then righted himself, smoothing his frown away as he headed out on to the shop floor for another day.

“Maybe he will.”

**Author's Note:**

> First Suits fic! God help us all.
> 
> This was originally just going to be a very short, very fluffy piece, but suddenly it grew a plot, and here we are. Don't get me wrong, it's not about to become an epic, but we'll be here for a couple more chapters yet.
> 
> Dedicated to the dork who is solely responsible for letting me fall for these two so hard and so fast. I shall exact my revenge on you one fic at a time.


End file.
